Buton Rinpoche, a Tibetan Buddhist monk who fled from Chinese oppression in the 1950s, bursts in on the cozy academic environment of Thomas Walsh, Norman Levi, and Trish Taylor, members of the "cultural elite" at Yale. All well-known professors, all likable, all politically correct, all miserable.
Rinpoche stalks the trio like a tiger. Indeed, he may be a tiger, given that he is a dying breed of living and walking philosophy, a person who literally embodies what he believes, and doesn't just write about it in obscure texts or bandy about his ideas over wine and cheese.
Rinpoche's whimsical, passionate, and often hilarious rantings at the professors result in a series of dialogues that reveal to them their innermost selves: their fears, their shallowness, their depth, their humanity. Rinpoche strips them down -- particularly Walsh -- to the bare essentials of what they are. What they see as a result is that they are not the enlightened teachers they profess to be, but rather frightened children with inflated ideas copied from great minds -- professional pundits more concerned with book profits and tenure than truth.
Rinpoche stands as a reminder to the professors. Not so much that he represents a culture, country or religion, but rather a state of mind that is uncompromising in its quest for the excellence of every single moment, even if the moment is banal. A state of mind represented by the ideal of Tibet, and one that underscores the tragedy of the country's genocidal destruction by the Chinese government.
